INTERVIEWS – Steven Caldwell on Life after Soccer by Djuradj “George” Vujcic, Canadian writer and translator.
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Urban Book Circle® (UBC)
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Steven Caldwell on Life after Soccer
Editor’s Note: This informational interview was conducted on November 9, 2020 for an Introduction to Sport Management course taught by Ashwin Patel, PhD as part of the Sport Management program at Humber College.
Djuradj Vujcic: Joining me for this interview today is Steven Caldwell – former captain of Toronto FC and Scottish international. Steven, you joined Toronto FC back in 2013 on loan, initially, from Birmingham City. I wanted to ask, first of all, how did that come to be and what were your first impressions of Toronto?
Steven Caldwell: Thanks for having me, I’m excited to do this interview. It came about quite quickly actually. I was playing at Birmingham and my contract was coming to an end and I was looking for another opportunity. It was pretty clear I wasn’t going to be staying in Birmingham and I got a call from my agent to say that Toronto was interested and that they were keen on me maybe coming and playing in MLS so I immediately told them that I would be interested and that I would consider it come July and the response came back that they needed me immediately. They wanted me to be there in 4-5 days’ time. I just felt that was unreasonable as I had played a long season in the UK and I needed some time to have a break and recharge and so they said to me – Ryan Nelsen was the head coach at the time – they said give Ryan Nelsen a call, you’ll like him, explain and see where you guys are. So, I called Ryan up fully intending to say I’ll see you in July if you’re still interested and lo and behold, ten-fifteen minutes later he had convinced me to get on a plane in three days’ time. I was coming to Toronto and I was on that loan period that you talked about. Yeah, he’s a persuasive guy and still a very good friend of mine. I’m glad that I made that decision. It was an eight-week loan but it was maybe a few days if not a week into that loan when I realized it was where I wanted to be and I knew I could bring value, I could add value to the team, to the changing room, to the roster and just really be an influence with my leadership skills to try and help build what we were trying to achieve. So it was a great choice for me to come to Toronto, it was an easy decision and I loved this city from the first minute that I arrived. I always felt that we were a club that were building toward something quite significant and thankfully I was proved to be right and unfortunately for me, after that it was time to retire but I think we set up a lot of great foundations in the couple of years where I was playing and you could see that there was a trajectory and a real momentum towards the success that TFC have had.
Djuradj Vujcic: You mentioned leadership skills. You quickly became captain. Coming in, did you know that you would finish your career with Toronto? Is this something you expected? I also wanted to tie into that because after soccer, you’ve made a name for yourself as a commentator and an analyst. What lead to this decision? Was this something you thought about while playing?
Steven Caldwell: Yeah, I always felt I’d finish my career with Toronto. You know, I was coming here for I had hoped four or five years. I was 32-33 at the time so I knew I was getting to the last stages of my career but once I decided to sign the contract, it was two and a half years, I always felt that I would be finishing my career in Toronto. Unfortunately for me, like I said, my retirement came a little bit earlier than I would have liked. Maybe I could have tried a little bit longer but I was just picking up these small injuries and I felt it was better for the team to reach some of my cap money and the organization wanted me to stay with Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment in Toronto and I sort of hung up the boots and I still have a little bit of regret about that – I think every football player probably does – but I was nearly 35 by that point and I had a decent career. I didn’t want to be a guy who’s playing a few games a year, I always wanted to be a sort of significant member of the team and member of the squad so I made the decision. I hung up the boots after a great couple of years in Toronto where I played about fifty games. I had hoped it might have been a few more but I then took the decision to try something else. I worked in the business department of soccer with MLSE and did some good work there but while I was still playing, I got a few opportunities to work with TSN and some Premier League shows. I enjoyed that. I enjoyed that side of football – the broadcasting and the media – so the opportunities just became a bit more consistent to the point where – maybe a little bit through my career at MLSE – off the pitch I started to find that I was at TSN as much as I was at MLSE so things just aligned. Jason de Vos left for a fantastic role with Canada Soccer and there was a real opening there and I took it and I’ve really enjoyed my work. I’ve called – oh, I don’t know how many games now, probably getting close to a couple hundred or a hundred and fifty games. Most of them with Luke Wileman who for me is the best in the business. He’s just absolutely brilliant with what he does. We have a great partnership, we know each other really well and I think we complement each other really well. It’s something that I look to continue as we move forward. We’ve done a World Cup together with Kristian Jack and we’ve done a EURO and we’ve got another EURO coming up. We’re a good team. We bring different strengths and I really enjoy the work that I do with both of the guys.
Djuradj Vujcic: Your new business Horizon Leader Group aims to help professional athletes with their brand and transition out of professional sports. Can you please tell me a little bit about the challenges of transitioning out of sport? How hard is it for an athlete to have a plan for their post-playing career?
Steven Caldwell: Yeah, I’m glad you asked that. Thanks for asking. It’s a start-up and the ideation of it happened about four or five years ago pretty soon after I retired. About a year or a year and a half ago, we really started going with this thing. As people are probably aware, it’s a very traumatic experience to retire as a professional athlete. You put so much into your career as a soccer player or a baseball player or a swimmer, a golfer or whatever it may be that, when it comes to an end and that’s usually about your mid-thirties if you’re really lucky, there’s not a lot done for these men and women to allow them to transition and I feel that there’s a real business there and that there’s a way of bringing these people in and allowing them in mourning the death of a career and to help them through that process. Athletes by athletes for athletes. That’s one of our slogans because we have so many fantastic people involved. We call them managing members but they’re essentially ambassadors. Guys like Ian Leggatt who used to be a golfer, Leo Rautins who obviously calls the Raptors games and who was a basketball player and a basketball coach, we have Jocelyn Lemieux who had about a ten-year career in the NHL, we have Sam Effah who’s joined and who’s an Olympian – a current Olympian who’s still competing and already thinking about what might be next once he stops competing at the highest level. So, great people involved setting up the business nicely. The idea is we bring you in, we help you through that early transition of loss and maybe you’re just missing your identity a little bit then the next stage is a real build-up of coaching taking you through some assessments to understand who you are, what your strengths are as a person, will you be able to utilize your skills, help you out with the development of that, some brand development if you already have a little bit of a brand or you’re looking to establish a brand, what you want to see, what you want that to be and then we push you into the direction that you want to go. Through a little bit of coaching, we can send you towards a new profession, a way of working. If you want to be philanthropic, we set you up for that and we just get you prepared for the next stage in life. So yeah, I’m excited about what’s ahead. I do feel like there’s a significant gap and marketplace and it’s just up to us now to tell the story, to tell all these athletes to hear about what we do, to come on and be part of the program and then share these success stories with the world of sport basically.
Djuradj Vujcic: I have to ask you about COVID-19 as, unfortunately, it has impacted everyone. How has it impacted you and your work and has it impacted your work with the Canadian men’s national team of which you are an assistant coach?
Steven Caldwell: Yeah, it’s impacted me personally quite severely. Obviously most of my working gigs are around live events whether it be a soccer match or an event in a venue or whatever it may be. I’ve been severely affected but, like everybody else, we’ve adapted. Not called as many games as I would have liked from a live stadium – I’ve called two games, I think, the first two games this season were with fans so yeah it’s been unusual but like I said, you adapt, you learn new techniques, you accept that that’s where we are and there’s many people worse off than me at the moment. We do a lot of online shows, we’ve been keeping up a consistent online show every single Thursday with Luke (Wileman), KJ (Kristian Jack) and myself. I broadcast the show, it’s more a general soccer show but focused on MLS and it’s been going pretty well so that’s been fun. But when you look at the Canadian men’s national team side where I’m fortunate enough to be invited to be part of John Herdman’s coaching staff – it’s really decimated their year. It’s given us some severe challenges. We led a camp in January in California which was very successful. A young North American group of players who did really well twice against Barbados and unfortunately just fell in a 1-0 defeat against Iceland where we played extremely well, dominated possession, created chances, kept chances to a minimum as well but unfortunately we lost the game. I was really excited about Trinidad and Tobago coming up in BC and then in March, all of a sudden, this new virus hits, there’s a pandemic, we cancel the friendly match. At that point, we didn’t know – we fully expected to be playing some games in a couple of months I would say and it didn’t happen. You then had international football coming back but it was particularly difficult for our region. We were hoping to have a game in November but we just couldn’t make it work. We were potentially going to go to Europe and play a match but it didn’t happen for safety reasons, for insurance reasons – a lot of different things came into it but what’s left, as we know, is we touch points with our players for the best part of a year probably. Fingers crossed, we’re going to get a camp in in January and we’re going to take these guys somewhere and get to know them again and work on things that we’ve been building because we’ve had great success in the last year to two years. It’s been really an upwards curve and we’ve been doing extremely well and we’ve got some outstanding players now. The obvious ones being Alphonso Davies and Jonathan David but we have Scott Arfield playing some terrific football at Rangers, Jonathan Osorio playing the best football in his life in Toronto and the emergence of Max Crépeau to fight Milan Borjan for the place in goal there and we’ve got Richie Laryea’s emergence at right-back – I could go on and on, there’s so many success stories. Young Alistair Johnston at Nashville who’s done really well in his first year in MLS. He played a lot of minutes, he’s going into his first playoff campaign and so the success stories are there for everyone to see and we just want to get these guys back together, to build on that, to work on the things that we’ve been really consistent with under John who’s a world-class coach – really, a terrific coach and his ideas in the game are outstanding – to get them back together and see if we can get these guys moving forward again and get them back to doing what they love while playing for their country.
Djuradj Vujcic: What trends do you see impacting the way soccer is produced and consumed over the next five years?
Steven Caldwell: Canada beat the United States last year at BMO Field and I think this will have a lasting impact on professional sport in Canada. I do. I think it will have a lasting impact on young Canadian boys and girls. The girls are a great example as Christine Sinclair and her World Cup appearances and Olympic performances – they’ve always had that star to kind of look up to. Now, I think the boys are getting more and more reference points for that. Alphonso Davies is obviously the one who’s lifted the Champions League trophy. He’s played for Bayern Munich, he’s shown that the development in his game is quite staggering. Jonathan David, I watched him play at San Siro on Thursday afternoon where he was just brilliant. He’s not got his goal yet but he does so much more than just score goals. The way that he set up the third one I thought was outstanding, so they have the examples, they have their reference points now to look towards and they also have events, they have games. They have things that they watch – hopefully live with their eyes or at least on television where they can see significant things happen to Canadian players and I think the biggest one was obviously on BMO Field in October 2019 where we went out there, we took the game to a strong US national team. Christian Pulisic was playing, Weston McKennie was playing, Michael Bradley was playing. Top stars all over the field and we took the game to them, we didn’t sit back and squeeze out a 2-0 victory. We actually went and attacked them and I think that’s key. I think there’s a change and a shift in mentality that was created by John and it’s been taken on by the players. A shift in mentality that we’re as good as anybody. When we do the things that we are good at and we’re on the front foot, we’re as good as anybody. We can give anybody a game and a match so that was a big one. I also believe that the 2016 playoff series between Montreal Impact and TFC is very significant. I think we’ll hear that story come up more and more as these young guys progress though the game – where they were that night, how that night made them feel. Or two nights I should say because the one in The Big O (Olympic Stadium in Montreal) was just as significant and there was over 60,000 people at the game. It finished 3-2 of course for Montreal then back to BMO Field and 40,000 with the temporary stands there made for a magnificent night in the rain. One of the greatest games I’ve witnessed on Canadian soil – 3-2 after ninety minutes and obviously TFC get a couple of goals in extra time just to take it away from them. A brilliant Impact team it has to be said and two sets of players giving everything and I know everybody on that field wasn’t Canadian but two Canadian teams played football the right way and went at each other. When I think back to my childhood in Scotland, I think back to the important games between Celtic – Rangers and Cup finals and Scotland games like Scotland’s qualification to the 1990 World Cup then the 1998 World Cup where they opened the tournament against Brazil and I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget how I felt, where I was and what it made me aspire to and hope that I could achieve. Fortunately for me, I did and so we’re going to get these stories coming out and how these games, these reference points, these players made them feel at 10, 11, 12 and how they pushed them forward to become full internationals in the future.
Djuradj Vujcic: You mentioned John Herdman’s philosophy with the Canadian men’s national team – their new philosophy. How important is it to have a winning mentality not just in sports but is that a transferrable skill that everyone can use in life? For example, with the Canadian team we can say yeah, we’re Canada and without respecting the opponent too much we can go and show what we’re all about.
Steven Caldwell: Absolutely. We’ve got to be proud of who we are. You’ve got to find that will and desire in your heart and your mind that makes you stand up, puff your chest out and give your best. Now, we are a very respectful nation of people – Canadians – we obviously do it in our way. We can’t act like another nation – I don’t need to say names here – but we can’t act like somebody else. We’ve got to be ourselves and we’re doing that. But we should be proud of who we are. We have a lot of great traits and personalities. We also have some phenomenal talent and I think we just need to believe in that. I think we needed to really gel together as a group so culture is critically important to that. The way that you build culture, the way that you build togetherness within a squad. John has done immense work within that regard with the Canadian men’s national team to the point now where, if you do it properly at the start – the work in terms of what you have to put into that gets less and less because the guys control it themselves. The nucleus of the squad actually creates the culture. You know, it takes more than two people to create a culture. It takes three people. Once you have three people, you’re creating a culture. Good or bad. It’s up to the leader to distinguish and determine what he wants that culture to be and I think John does that better than pretty much anybody I’ve ever worked with and that’s including when I was a player and I’ve worked with some phenomenal names. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been coached by some amazing people but the way that he’s built that and built the foundation for that is exceptional. I think you look at the tactical plan and it’s all about mindset, it’s all about being positive and on the front foot and playing to our strengths rather than defensively trying to survive or get through a game or defend. It’s all about being on the front foot and taking games to teams. Now, when we go away to Mexico or we go to the US, we have to calm that a little bit and be sensible about the way that we do it. But, as long as you have that mindset and mind that we’re going to be on the front foot – that’s what I like to say – or attacking and pushing forward or whatever you want to say then I think that you create that way of thinking and that culture just builds on that. I’ve been so proud to have been part of the last four or five camps and the work that we’ve done. Everyone plays a part, everyone’s there to support and help ultimately the players but each other along the way. The different departments all come together just tremendously well so it’s an absolute pleasure to be involved and I look forward to (hopefully) many more camps and many more years of working with the Canadian national team.
Djuradj Vujcic: I’m a Sport Management student at Humber College. What message would you give to Sport Management students and to recent graduates who are looking to get into the field?
Steven Caldwell: I would say always be available, always be volunteering, always be trying to support that. That’s how you get into this business. The soccer business but also the professional sports business in general. It’s so difficult to get a match and to find an opening so can you be there for people? Network. Network, make your calls, reach out to people. People reach out to me all the time. I try and reply to as many people as possible because it’s about giving back. It’s about realizing how fortunate of a position I’m in and maybe I can just help someone with a thirty-minute call, a podcast, a coffee like back in the old days when we could meet in person and just getting to know people and providing that kind of support. If you put yourself out there and you’re willing to put the hard work in, volunteer and work from the bottom all the way up then there’s no reason to see why you can’t get to the top eventually.
Djuradj Vujcic: That’s something our professors talk about in class – the importance of networking – and you mentioned it as well. Do you think that networking is the number one thing that we should work on?
Steven Caldwell: I think so. Just work hard. Think what more can you do, who can you reach out to, how can you be of support. You know, you’re going to have to volunteer a lot of your time and a lot of your energy to different initiatives or organizations to show that you’re willing to do it. Once you get into that door, you know it’s something you can do to prove your worth, to prove and add value as I said earlier. It doesn’t mean speaking every two minutes or being busy or anything like that, it’s about adding value in specific ways where you contribute. I think that is an aim where to be – am I doing enough, am I out there, do people know what I’m about and show your personality. Be who you are. Don’t be scared about what you bring and who you are because people will respond to that and eventually it will get you places.
Djuradj Vujcic: In class, we also discussed the ability to be adaptive and open to learning new things. You mentioned also how you take the time to do podcasts, videos and Zoom calls. How has adaptability and openness to learning new things shaped your playing and work career?
Steven Caldwell: Yeah, you have to adapt, don’t ya (laughs). Things change and this pandemic has taught us that more than anything. You adapt, you get better on the computer, you buy a mic, you get good at setting things up and you take it forward so yeah I’ve always been open to that. I wouldn’t say I’m a tech guy by any stretch of the imagination but you have to be a little bit good at everything if you want to be at the top level so that’s something that I’ve done. As soon as COVID hit, I went through a podcast series and got out of my comfort zone and that’s another thing for any aspiring students that are shooting to get into that business. You can’t always be in your comfort zone. You’ve got to do things that are going to make you a little bit uncomfortable to grow and to improve and to gain that experience so for me, interviewing players was always something that I found difficult. I was a player so I was always the one sitting there or standing there waiting to be asked the question. Now I have to ask the question and I also have two very formidable colleagues who have been a great support in Kristian Jack and Luke Wileman but you know, you stand there and think – well how could I give an interview as good as these guys? It’s easy to never volunteer yourself but if I want to grow as a broadcaster, I have to be seen as someone who can do that little bit of extra and can interview people as well. I also want people to know that I have a voice and ideas with the game of football but also with different sports or social issues in life. I want to be someone that does more of that so I’ll get out of my comfort zone. I’m going to start podcasting soon. The details will be coming but the idea is to talk about some of the issues around the game of football that nobody really tackles. Obviously Black Lives Matter is a very important one right now, concussions would be another pretty serious one for me, mental health… I’m going to be doing these things together and I’ll get out of my comfort zone to try and create some unique content that I find interesting and that is obviously very important to get to this story and to get the message out there.
Djuradj Vujcic: With mental health which you mentioned, do you think podcasts like yours will help players who are newly retired and in turn this will help them realize that if they become a professional at eighteen and retire at thirty-five that they’re still very young in the grand scheme of things?
Steven Caldwell: Yeah, it’s that feeling of loss like mourning a career and losing a thing that you love that is so hard to take so there’s a lot of very negative connotations around about retirement. For most people it’s at sixty-five or seventy these days isn’t it but for athletes, inevitably, it’s somewhere between thirty-ish and forty if you’re very, very lucky. So, you have this feeling that you’re dying (laughs) and you’re still very fit and very capable and have many attributes – leadership, teamwork, adversity, accountability. These things that we talk about are needed in every walk of life and in every business so once you figure it out and once you figure out where you want to be, what you’re good at, then you can attract people when you use companies like Horizon Leader Group to establish that. Then I think that you can be extremely successful through your life learnings through the game of soccer, football, golf, tennis – whatever you want to call it. Every sport. We’re the same. We’re wired the same. The sport might be different, the technique to be successful is different but the mentality is the same. It’s a winning mentality, it’s never say die, it’s pushing forward through all forms of difficulty and adversity and rejection – it’s a tough life. But yeah, I think that podcasts can help and many different things can help with this but it’s about talking about it and being open about where you are and what you’re feeling because I’ll bet you, if my podcast and your podcast or anybody’s forum can change one person’s opinion or make them feel better or inspire them to get up off their seat and go and try something new or tell someone about their troubles that they’re going through then it’s been worthwhile. It really has. I think that these things are great. We are talking more. Talking within a lot of silos and a lot of divisions but we need to share to improve and to take things forward. Exciting times with some of the projects I have on the go. It’s always nice to talk to people about what they’re going through but then it allows you to realize how you can improve and what you maybe need support in as an individual as well.
Djuradj Vujcic: To cap off – it’s not related to my school project so much but it’s something I wanted to ask. On November 12th – Serbia versus Scotland. I wanted to ask your thoughts as my background is Serbian and you played twelve matches for Scotland from 2001 to 2011. What do you expect out of this match? Whoever wins goes to the European Championship. Serbia hasn’t qualified for a EURO in twenty years and Scotland hasn’t in twenty-four, so I wanted to hear your opinion.
Steven Caldwell: Yeah, big game isn’t it? Scotland’s not been in a major tournament in twenty-two years (the last time was the 1998 World Cup) so I think we’re at about the same point. We really need this. You guys were obviously at a World Cup a couple years ago so you’ve definitely got a bit more experience. I would say on paper a bit more quality as well. A formidable team – Serbia. A lot of talented players that have played at the highest clubs in Europe so it’s going to be a hard one. I don’t know what to expect. I think if it was in Scotland it would be a bit more even so I think that because it’s in Serbia, I weigh it in Serbia’s favour. It’s going to be a tough one but it’s a one-off game and anything can happen. Scotland have proved recently what with the great results that we’ve had in October that we’re capable. We have Andy Robertson – one of the best left-backs in the world with Liverpool, we have Kieran Tierney who’s unfortunately also a left-back – he’s at Arsenal. John McGinn’s playing for Aston Villa, Stuart Armstrong is doing extremely well up at the top of the league with Southampton at the moment. Some great names. Scott McTominay’s been getting some very important minutes for Manchester United so we have some good players. Can’t underestimate us. We’re going to be fighting, we’re going to be there in the bouts and I think it’ll be a tight game that’ll be decided by one goal or indeed go to penalty kicks.
Djuradj Vujcic: Well, thanks so much, Steven, I enjoyed our talk. In regards to that match, may the best team win, I guess that’s all I can say. Thanks so much again for taking the time to speak with me for this project and I hope we can speak again in the future sometime.
Steven Caldwell: Thanks again, George, it was a pleasure. Take care!
Djuradj Vujcic: Joining me for this interview today is Steven Caldwell – former captain of Toronto FC and Scottish international. Steven, you joined Toronto FC back in 2013 on loan, initially, from Birmingham City. I wanted to ask, first of all, how did that come to be and what were your first impressions of Toronto?
Steven Caldwell: Thanks for having me, I’m excited to do this interview. It came about quite quickly actually. I was playing at Birmingham and my contract was coming to an end and I was looking for another opportunity. It was pretty clear I wasn’t going to be staying in Birmingham and I got a call from my agent to say that Toronto was interested and that they were keen on me maybe coming and playing in MLS so I immediately told them that I would be interested and that I would consider it come July and the response came back that they needed me immediately. They wanted me to be there in 4-5 days’ time. I just felt that was unreasonable as I had played a long season in the UK and I needed some time to have a break and recharge and so they said to me – Ryan Nelsen was the head coach at the time – they said give Ryan Nelsen a call, you’ll like him, explain and see where you guys are. So, I called Ryan up fully intending to say I’ll see you in July if you’re still interested and lo and behold, ten-fifteen minutes later he had convinced me to get on a plane in three days’ time. I was coming to Toronto and I was on that loan period that you talked about. Yeah, he’s a persuasive guy and still a very good friend of mine. I’m glad that I made that decision. It was an eight-week loan but it was maybe a few days if not a week into that loan when I realized it was where I wanted to be and I knew I could bring value, I could add value to the team, to the changing room, to the roster and just really be an influence with my leadership skills to try and help build what we were trying to achieve. So it was a great choice for me to come to Toronto, it was an easy decision and I loved this city from the first minute that I arrived. I always felt that we were a club that were building toward something quite significant and thankfully I was proved to be right and unfortunately for me, after that it was time to retire but I think we set up a lot of great foundations in the couple of years where I was playing and you could see that there was a trajectory and a real momentum towards the success that TFC have had.
Djuradj Vujcic: You mentioned leadership skills. You quickly became captain. Coming in, did you know that you would finish your career with Toronto? Is this something you expected? I also wanted to tie into that because after soccer, you’ve made a name for yourself as a commentator and an analyst. What lead to this decision? Was this something you thought about while playing?
Steven Caldwell: Yeah, I always felt I’d finish my career with Toronto. You know, I was coming here for I had hoped four or five years. I was 32-33 at the time so I knew I was getting to the last stages of my career but once I decided to sign the contract, it was two and a half years, I always felt that I would be finishing my career in Toronto. Unfortunately for me, like I said, my retirement came a little bit earlier than I would have liked. Maybe I could have tried a little bit longer but I was just picking up these small injuries and I felt it was better for the team to reach some of my cap money and the organization wanted me to stay with Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment in Toronto and I sort of hung up the boots and I still have a little bit of regret about that – I think every football player probably does – but I was nearly 35 by that point and I had a decent career. I didn’t want to be a guy who’s playing a few games a year, I always wanted to be a sort of significant member of the team and member of the squad so I made the decision. I hung up the boots after a great couple of years in Toronto where I played about fifty games. I had hoped it might have been a few more but I then took the decision to try something else. I worked in the business department of soccer with MLSE and did some good work there but while I was still playing, I got a few opportunities to work with TSN and some Premier League shows. I enjoyed that. I enjoyed that side of football – the broadcasting and the media – so the opportunities just became a bit more consistent to the point where – maybe a little bit through my career at MLSE – off the pitch I started to find that I was at TSN as much as I was at MLSE so things just aligned. Jason de Vos left for a fantastic role with Canada Soccer and there was a real opening there and I took it and I’ve really enjoyed my work. I’ve called – oh, I don’t know how many games now, probably getting close to a couple hundred or a hundred and fifty games. Most of them with Luke Wileman who for me is the best in the business. He’s just absolutely brilliant with what he does. We have a great partnership, we know each other really well and I think we complement each other really well. It’s something that I look to continue as we move forward. We’ve done a World Cup together with Kristian Jack and we’ve done a EURO and we’ve got another EURO coming up. We’re a good team. We bring different strengths and I really enjoy the work that I do with both of the guys.
Djuradj Vujcic: Your new business Horizon Leader Group aims to help professional athletes with their brand and transition out of professional sports. Can you please tell me a little bit about the challenges of transitioning out of sport? How hard is it for an athlete to have a plan for their post-playing career?
Steven Caldwell: Yeah, I’m glad you asked that. Thanks for asking. It’s a start-up and the ideation of it happened about four or five years ago pretty soon after I retired. About a year or a year and a half ago, we really started going with this thing. As people are probably aware, it’s a very traumatic experience to retire as a professional athlete. You put so much into your career as a soccer player or a baseball player or a swimmer, a golfer or whatever it may be that, when it comes to an end and that’s usually about your mid-thirties if you’re really lucky, there’s not a lot done for these men and women to allow them to transition and I feel that there’s a real business there and that there’s a way of bringing these people in and allowing them in mourning the death of a career and to help them through that process. Athletes by athletes for athletes. That’s one of our slogans because we have so many fantastic people involved. We call them managing members but they’re essentially ambassadors. Guys like Ian Leggatt who used to be a golfer, Leo Rautins who obviously calls the Raptors games and who was a basketball player and a basketball coach, we have Jocelyn Lemieux who had about a ten-year career in the NHL, we have Sam Effah who’s joined and who’s an Olympian – a current Olympian who’s still competing and already thinking about what might be next once he stops competing at the highest level. So, great people involved setting up the business nicely. The idea is we bring you in, we help you through that early transition of loss and maybe you’re just missing your identity a little bit then the next stage is a real build-up of coaching taking you through some assessments to understand who you are, what your strengths are as a person, will you be able to utilize your skills, help you out with the development of that, some brand development if you already have a little bit of a brand or you’re looking to establish a brand, what you want to see, what you want that to be and then we push you into the direction that you want to go. Through a little bit of coaching, we can send you towards a new profession, a way of working. If you want to be philanthropic, we set you up for that and we just get you prepared for the next stage in life. So yeah, I’m excited about what’s ahead. I do feel like there’s a significant gap and marketplace and it’s just up to us now to tell the story, to tell all these athletes to hear about what we do, to come on and be part of the program and then share these success stories with the world of sport basically.
Djuradj Vujcic: I have to ask you about COVID-19 as, unfortunately, it has impacted everyone. How has it impacted you and your work and has it impacted your work with the Canadian men’s national team of which you are an assistant coach?
Steven Caldwell: Yeah, it’s impacted me personally quite severely. Obviously most of my working gigs are around live events whether it be a soccer match or an event in a venue or whatever it may be. I’ve been severely affected but, like everybody else, we’ve adapted. Not called as many games as I would have liked from a live stadium – I’ve called two games, I think, the first two games this season were with fans so yeah it’s been unusual but like I said, you adapt, you learn new techniques, you accept that that’s where we are and there’s many people worse off than me at the moment. We do a lot of online shows, we’ve been keeping up a consistent online show every single Thursday with Luke (Wileman), KJ (Kristian Jack) and myself. I broadcast the show, it’s more a general soccer show but focused on MLS and it’s been going pretty well so that’s been fun. But when you look at the Canadian men’s national team side where I’m fortunate enough to be invited to be part of John Herdman’s coaching staff – it’s really decimated their year. It’s given us some severe challenges. We led a camp in January in California which was very successful. A young North American group of players who did really well twice against Barbados and unfortunately just fell in a 1-0 defeat against Iceland where we played extremely well, dominated possession, created chances, kept chances to a minimum as well but unfortunately we lost the game. I was really excited about Trinidad and Tobago coming up in BC and then in March, all of a sudden, this new virus hits, there’s a pandemic, we cancel the friendly match. At that point, we didn’t know – we fully expected to be playing some games in a couple of months I would say and it didn’t happen. You then had international football coming back but it was particularly difficult for our region. We were hoping to have a game in November but we just couldn’t make it work. We were potentially going to go to Europe and play a match but it didn’t happen for safety reasons, for insurance reasons – a lot of different things came into it but what’s left, as we know, is we touch points with our players for the best part of a year probably. Fingers crossed, we’re going to get a camp in in January and we’re going to take these guys somewhere and get to know them again and work on things that we’ve been building because we’ve had great success in the last year to two years. It’s been really an upwards curve and we’ve been doing extremely well and we’ve got some outstanding players now. The obvious ones being Alphonso Davies and Jonathan David but we have Scott Arfield playing some terrific football at Rangers, Jonathan Osorio playing the best football in his life in Toronto and the emergence of Max Crépeau to fight Milan Borjan for the place in goal there and we’ve got Richie Laryea’s emergence at right-back – I could go on and on, there’s so many success stories. Young Alistair Johnston at Nashville who’s done really well in his first year in MLS. He played a lot of minutes, he’s going into his first playoff campaign and so the success stories are there for everyone to see and we just want to get these guys back together, to build on that, to work on the things that we’ve been really consistent with under John who’s a world-class coach – really, a terrific coach and his ideas in the game are outstanding – to get them back together and see if we can get these guys moving forward again and get them back to doing what they love while playing for their country.
Djuradj Vujcic: What trends do you see impacting the way soccer is produced and consumed over the next five years?
Steven Caldwell: Canada beat the United States last year at BMO Field and I think this will have a lasting impact on professional sport in Canada. I do. I think it will have a lasting impact on young Canadian boys and girls. The girls are a great example as Christine Sinclair and her World Cup appearances and Olympic performances – they’ve always had that star to kind of look up to. Now, I think the boys are getting more and more reference points for that. Alphonso Davies is obviously the one who’s lifted the Champions League trophy. He’s played for Bayern Munich, he’s shown that the development in his game is quite staggering. Jonathan David, I watched him play at San Siro on Thursday afternoon where he was just brilliant. He’s not got his goal yet but he does so much more than just score goals. The way that he set up the third one I thought was outstanding, so they have the examples, they have their reference points now to look towards and they also have events, they have games. They have things that they watch – hopefully live with their eyes or at least on television where they can see significant things happen to Canadian players and I think the biggest one was obviously on BMO Field in October 2019 where we went out there, we took the game to a strong US national team. Christian Pulisic was playing, Weston McKennie was playing, Michael Bradley was playing. Top stars all over the field and we took the game to them, we didn’t sit back and squeeze out a 2-0 victory. We actually went and attacked them and I think that’s key. I think there’s a change and a shift in mentality that was created by John and it’s been taken on by the players. A shift in mentality that we’re as good as anybody. When we do the things that we are good at and we’re on the front foot, we’re as good as anybody. We can give anybody a game and a match so that was a big one. I also believe that the 2016 playoff series between Montreal Impact and TFC is very significant. I think we’ll hear that story come up more and more as these young guys progress though the game – where they were that night, how that night made them feel. Or two nights I should say because the one in The Big O (Olympic Stadium in Montreal) was just as significant and there was over 60,000 people at the game. It finished 3-2 of course for Montreal then back to BMO Field and 40,000 with the temporary stands there made for a magnificent night in the rain. One of the greatest games I’ve witnessed on Canadian soil – 3-2 after ninety minutes and obviously TFC get a couple of goals in extra time just to take it away from them. A brilliant Impact team it has to be said and two sets of players giving everything and I know everybody on that field wasn’t Canadian but two Canadian teams played football the right way and went at each other. When I think back to my childhood in Scotland, I think back to the important games between Celtic – Rangers and Cup finals and Scotland games like Scotland’s qualification to the 1990 World Cup then the 1998 World Cup where they opened the tournament against Brazil and I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget how I felt, where I was and what it made me aspire to and hope that I could achieve. Fortunately for me, I did and so we’re going to get these stories coming out and how these games, these reference points, these players made them feel at 10, 11, 12 and how they pushed them forward to become full internationals in the future.
Djuradj Vujcic: You mentioned John Herdman’s philosophy with the Canadian men’s national team – their new philosophy. How important is it to have a winning mentality not just in sports but is that a transferrable skill that everyone can use in life? For example, with the Canadian team we can say yeah, we’re Canada and without respecting the opponent too much we can go and show what we’re all about.
Steven Caldwell: Absolutely. We’ve got to be proud of who we are. You’ve got to find that will and desire in your heart and your mind that makes you stand up, puff your chest out and give your best. Now, we are a very respectful nation of people – Canadians – we obviously do it in our way. We can’t act like another nation – I don’t need to say names here – but we can’t act like somebody else. We’ve got to be ourselves and we’re doing that. But we should be proud of who we are. We have a lot of great traits and personalities. We also have some phenomenal talent and I think we just need to believe in that. I think we needed to really gel together as a group so culture is critically important to that. The way that you build culture, the way that you build togetherness within a squad. John has done immense work within that regard with the Canadian men’s national team to the point now where, if you do it properly at the start – the work in terms of what you have to put into that gets less and less because the guys control it themselves. The nucleus of the squad actually creates the culture. You know, it takes more than two people to create a culture. It takes three people. Once you have three people, you’re creating a culture. Good or bad. It’s up to the leader to distinguish and determine what he wants that culture to be and I think John does that better than pretty much anybody I’ve ever worked with and that’s including when I was a player and I’ve worked with some phenomenal names. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been coached by some amazing people but the way that he’s built that and built the foundation for that is exceptional. I think you look at the tactical plan and it’s all about mindset, it’s all about being positive and on the front foot and playing to our strengths rather than defensively trying to survive or get through a game or defend. It’s all about being on the front foot and taking games to teams. Now, when we go away to Mexico or we go to the US, we have to calm that a little bit and be sensible about the way that we do it. But, as long as you have that mindset and mind that we’re going to be on the front foot – that’s what I like to say – or attacking and pushing forward or whatever you want to say then I think that you create that way of thinking and that culture just builds on that. I’ve been so proud to have been part of the last four or five camps and the work that we’ve done. Everyone plays a part, everyone’s there to support and help ultimately the players but each other along the way. The different departments all come together just tremendously well so it’s an absolute pleasure to be involved and I look forward to (hopefully) many more camps and many more years of working with the Canadian national team.
Djuradj Vujcic: I’m a Sport Management student at Humber College. What message would you give to Sport Management students and to recent graduates who are looking to get into the field?
Steven Caldwell: I would say always be available, always be volunteering, always be trying to support that. That’s how you get into this business. The soccer business but also the professional sports business in general. It’s so difficult to get a match and to find an opening so can you be there for people? Network. Network, make your calls, reach out to people. People reach out to me all the time. I try and reply to as many people as possible because it’s about giving back. It’s about realizing how fortunate of a position I’m in and maybe I can just help someone with a thirty-minute call, a podcast, a coffee like back in the old days when we could meet in person and just getting to know people and providing that kind of support. If you put yourself out there and you’re willing to put the hard work in, volunteer and work from the bottom all the way up then there’s no reason to see why you can’t get to the top eventually.
Djuradj Vujcic: That’s something our professors talk about in class – the importance of networking – and you mentioned it as well. Do you think that networking is the number one thing that we should work on?
Steven Caldwell: I think so. Just work hard. Think what more can you do, who can you reach out to, how can you be of support. You know, you’re going to have to volunteer a lot of your time and a lot of your energy to different initiatives or organizations to show that you’re willing to do it. Once you get into that door, you know it’s something you can do to prove your worth, to prove and add value as I said earlier. It doesn’t mean speaking every two minutes or being busy or anything like that, it’s about adding value in specific ways where you contribute. I think that is an aim where to be – am I doing enough, am I out there, do people know what I’m about and show your personality. Be who you are. Don’t be scared about what you bring and who you are because people will respond to that and eventually it will get you places.
Djuradj Vujcic: In class, we also discussed the ability to be adaptive and open to learning new things. You mentioned also how you take the time to do podcasts, videos and Zoom calls. How has adaptability and openness to learning new things shaped your playing and work career?
Steven Caldwell: Yeah, you have to adapt, don’t ya (laughs). Things change and this pandemic has taught us that more than anything. You adapt, you get better on the computer, you buy a mic, you get good at setting things up and you take it forward so yeah I’ve always been open to that. I wouldn’t say I’m a tech guy by any stretch of the imagination but you have to be a little bit good at everything if you want to be at the top level so that’s something that I’ve done. As soon as COVID hit, I went through a podcast series and got out of my comfort zone and that’s another thing for any aspiring students that are shooting to get into that business. You can’t always be in your comfort zone. You’ve got to do things that are going to make you a little bit uncomfortable to grow and to improve and to gain that experience so for me, interviewing players was always something that I found difficult. I was a player so I was always the one sitting there or standing there waiting to be asked the question. Now I have to ask the question and I also have two very formidable colleagues who have been a great support in Kristian Jack and Luke Wileman but you know, you stand there and think – well how could I give an interview as good as these guys? It’s easy to never volunteer yourself but if I want to grow as a broadcaster, I have to be seen as someone who can do that little bit of extra and can interview people as well. I also want people to know that I have a voice and ideas with the game of football but also with different sports or social issues in life. I want to be someone that does more of that so I’ll get out of my comfort zone. I’m going to start podcasting soon. The details will be coming but the idea is to talk about some of the issues around the game of football that nobody really tackles. Obviously Black Lives Matter is a very important one right now, concussions would be another pretty serious one for me, mental health… I’m going to be doing these things together and I’ll get out of my comfort zone to try and create some unique content that I find interesting and that is obviously very important to get to this story and to get the message out there.
Djuradj Vujcic: With mental health which you mentioned, do you think podcasts like yours will help players who are newly retired and in turn this will help them realize that if they become a professional at eighteen and retire at thirty-five that they’re still very young in the grand scheme of things?
Steven Caldwell: Yeah, it’s that feeling of loss like mourning a career and losing a thing that you love that is so hard to take so there’s a lot of very negative connotations around about retirement. For most people it’s at sixty-five or seventy these days isn’t it but for athletes, inevitably, it’s somewhere between thirty-ish and forty if you’re very, very lucky. So, you have this feeling that you’re dying (laughs) and you’re still very fit and very capable and have many attributes – leadership, teamwork, adversity, accountability. These things that we talk about are needed in every walk of life and in every business so once you figure it out and once you figure out where you want to be, what you’re good at, then you can attract people when you use companies like Horizon Leader Group to establish that. Then I think that you can be extremely successful through your life learnings through the game of soccer, football, golf, tennis – whatever you want to call it. Every sport. We’re the same. We’re wired the same. The sport might be different, the technique to be successful is different but the mentality is the same. It’s a winning mentality, it’s never say die, it’s pushing forward through all forms of difficulty and adversity and rejection – it’s a tough life. But yeah, I think that podcasts can help and many different things can help with this but it’s about talking about it and being open about where you are and what you’re feeling because I’ll bet you, if my podcast and your podcast or anybody’s forum can change one person’s opinion or make them feel better or inspire them to get up off their seat and go and try something new or tell someone about their troubles that they’re going through then it’s been worthwhile. It really has. I think that these things are great. We are talking more. Talking within a lot of silos and a lot of divisions but we need to share to improve and to take things forward. Exciting times with some of the projects I have on the go. It’s always nice to talk to people about what they’re going through but then it allows you to realize how you can improve and what you maybe need support in as an individual as well.
Djuradj Vujcic: To cap off – it’s not related to my school project so much but it’s something I wanted to ask. On November 12th – Serbia versus Scotland. I wanted to ask your thoughts as my background is Serbian and you played twelve matches for Scotland from 2001 to 2011. What do you expect out of this match? Whoever wins goes to the European Championship. Serbia hasn’t qualified for a EURO in twenty years and Scotland hasn’t in twenty-four, so I wanted to hear your opinion.
Steven Caldwell: Yeah, big game isn’t it? Scotland’s not been in a major tournament in twenty-two years (the last time was the 1998 World Cup) so I think we’re at about the same point. We really need this. You guys were obviously at a World Cup a couple years ago so you’ve definitely got a bit more experience. I would say on paper a bit more quality as well. A formidable team – Serbia. A lot of talented players that have played at the highest clubs in Europe so it’s going to be a hard one. I don’t know what to expect. I think if it was in Scotland it would be a bit more even so I think that because it’s in Serbia, I weigh it in Serbia’s favour. It’s going to be a tough one but it’s a one-off game and anything can happen. Scotland have proved recently what with the great results that we’ve had in October that we’re capable. We have Andy Robertson – one of the best left-backs in the world with Liverpool, we have Kieran Tierney who’s unfortunately also a left-back – he’s at Arsenal. John McGinn’s playing for Aston Villa, Stuart Armstrong is doing extremely well up at the top of the league with Southampton at the moment. Some great names. Scott McTominay’s been getting some very important minutes for Manchester United so we have some good players. Can’t underestimate us. We’re going to be fighting, we’re going to be there in the bouts and I think it’ll be a tight game that’ll be decided by one goal or indeed go to penalty kicks.
Djuradj Vujcic: Well, thanks so much, Steven, I enjoyed our talk. In regards to that match, may the best team win, I guess that’s all I can say. Thanks so much again for taking the time to speak with me for this project and I hope we can speak again in the future sometime.
Steven Caldwell: Thanks again, George, it was a pleasure. Take care!
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Photos
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Steven Caldwell on Life after Soccer
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Last updated on October 13, 2023.
Published by Urban Book Circle on November 9, 2020 Urban Book Circle® (UBC) |
· Edited by Djuradj “George” Vujcic, Danijela Kovacevic Mikic and Prvoslav “Pearse” Vujcic ·
· Design & Artwork by Prvoslav “Pearse” Vujcic and Djuradj “George” Vujcic ·
All rights reserved. Copyright © Urban Book Circle®
· Design & Artwork by Prvoslav “Pearse” Vujcic and Djuradj “George” Vujcic ·
All rights reserved. Copyright © Urban Book Circle®
